SEOUL, Sept 24 (AFP) - Seven North Koreans who were holed up in Cambodia after fleeing their communist homeland arrived in South Korea on Friday, according to a media report here.
It was the first arrival here of North Koreans since a mass defection in July triggered anger in Pyongyang and damaged inter-Korean ties.
Since then North Korean defectors have become a sensitive issue here and South Korean officials said they were unable to confirm the report of the arrival of the latest batch carried by Yonhap news agency citing an unnamed official.
Earlier Friday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the Cambodian government not to repatriate seven North Koreans refugees to their Stalinist homeland where it said they would face torture and execution.
The North Koreans were held by immigration police in Phnom Penh since September 5 after travelling through China and Vietnam by boat and on foot. They are believed to be the first North Korean refugees detained in Cambodia.
In Phnom Penh, Cambodian deputy premier and foreign minister Hor Namhong said Friday he was unaware of the refugees' location but said his government was not handing them over to Pyongyang.
"Whether they have gone or not, I don't know," he told reporters. "What I would say is that we would not send them back to North Korea."
North Korea accused South Korea of colluding with the United States after what it termed a "mass kidnapping" of 468 refugees from the Stalinist state to Seoul in July.
The North Koreans arrived here in two waves on July 27-28 in the biggest defection since the end of the 1950-53 Korean war.
The mass defection in July involved the airlifting of North Koreans in two batches from Vietnam, where they had been gathering for months after escaping from their homeland via China.
North Korea accused Vietnam of conspiracy in the defection but Hanoi has denied involvement in the case.
About 5,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since 1953, most in the past three years. More than 1,000 have reached South Korea so far this year.
The latest asylum bid is seen as an embarrassment to Cambodia given the close personal ties between King Norodom Sihanouk and the leaders in Pyongyang.